How does WikiAves work?

The WikiAves was created to support the brazilian online community of biologists and birdwatchers. By offering interactive tools the site allow its users to promote the search for knowledge, communication between the users, publication of data about the brazilian birds with preservation emphasis and build the largest data bank of brazilian birds in the Internet. Its function is to gather and organize the data provided by bird watchers and collaborators to transform it into useful and easy of access informations for begginers, amateurs and professionals. In order to be easy of access, the site was divided into two areas: the first is the Wiki pages where the users can include and alter their pages contents. The second is the media area where the registered users can send photos and sounds. Once the media is added, it is evaluated by others users and the best medias are selected and showed in the wiki pages of species and other taxons.

The wiki pages of the WikiAves was created to transform data in information. Each species and taxons has its page with information obtained of registry and scientific of the list of Aves of Brazil from CBRO (Brazilian Committee of Register Ornithological) such as: scientific name, name in Portuguese, name in English, status and scientific classification. The pages of how to edit documentations helps the user to create and edit the pages wiki.

The page Birds of Brazil is the portal of the wiki pages of the WikiAves. Once in the site is possible to navigate through taxons and species of birds of Brazil. The best rated photos of each order of the Aves class are exhibit on these pages in their order sections.

The pages of the species are indentified by its species in Portuguese and the pages of superior taxons by the name of taxons.

All of the pages have a predetermined topic to help the user in the changes of its contents. The topics can be excluded or altered and new ones can be included.

Special commands were created to exhibit the best photos of the species or taxons, and the map of its occurrence and the commands can not be removed of the wiki pages and will be monitored the WikiAves administrators.

The registered users may publish photos and sounds through respective menu items, this media are published instantly and are of the user responsibility in accordance with the Terms of Use of the WikiAves. The pages of how to send photos and how to send sounds help the user in how to proceed in the media publication.

The photos must be sent in JPG format and the photos that are larger than 1024 X 1024 will be automatically resized and saved in 4 sizes preselected: miniature square(100×100), miniature(180×180), normal ( until 640×640) and larger(until 1024×1024). The miniature square can be altered by the photo author through the photo editing of the pages.

The sounds must be sent in the format MP3 and in the limited size 1MB (1 Megabyte).

The observer that publishes Media can collaborate with the WikiAves adding information related of Media published such as:

• Bird species;
• Bird sex;
• Bird age;
• Photography date/ recorded;
• Photography city/recorded;
• Photo Subject (What is the photo content?);
• Bird action/ (the photo shows the bird flying, eating…), etc.

Only the Date and the city of the photography/ recorded are obligatory information. Media without species’ information will be considerate Non-Indentified.

Medias without species identification are exhibit in the wiki section; however, they can be published for later identification. Other observers can suggest the identification (specie, age and sex) for the media author through the commentary forms of the media. When identification is suggested to the author of the media, the author can click the link “Accept Suggestion” in the commentary to alter the identification of his media suggested. An e-mail message is sent to all users who commented a media once a new suggestion of identification is inserted in the media or the suggestion is accepted by the author.

All the media of identified species are considered occurrence of the bird therefore must include the city and date of when the media was captured for future analyses of the species occurrence. Even after being identified, other observers can suggest the specie change through the commentary form of the media.

The registered observer can include commentary in the media pages of another observer. Through this resource he can suggest the inclusion or change of the sex, age of the bird photographed/ recorded. The observers’ commentaries and all of its contents published by them are subjected by the Terms of Use of WikiAves.

The registered observer can evaluate the Medias in their photography quality and registry through the system of the evaluation in the media pages. To evaluate a media, the user has to click in one of the five stars in the media page. The vote can range from 1 through 5 from left to right. The observers can not evaluate their own media. The evaluations will be used to qualify the photos and users in the ranking by the number of points.

The WikiAves map of occurrence exhibits the registry of certain bird specie in the Brazilian territory map of occurrence divided by estates. All the media with specific identification is considered one occurrence and geographic coordination of the city where the occurrence was registered is automatically marked in the map of occurrence. It is possible to consult the cities where the occurrence where registered by clicking on each estate. This map is also exhibited in the wiki pages of the WikiAves species.